various forms. i don't think that's a booming business right now. >> so you like the concept maybe at the beginning, but -- >> i liked it in 1962. >> i'm only 50 years late on this one. >> neil: but you're younger too. here's david. >> you knew this was coming, incomes falling gen. a new report showing the median household income heading south last month. now down more than 8% since president obama took office. now governor romney is out saying his plan to overhaul our massive tax code will put more money back in your pocket, but will it work? hi, everybody. welcome to "forbes on fox." steve, what do you think of this romney tax plan? >> it increases take-home pay,

middle class family, $2,000 extra in their take-home pay, and more importantly it reduces the price of doing work, being productive and taking risks. lowering that price, lowering tax rates. that's the way to get the economy going. worked for kennedy, for reagan, worked in the early part of the last decade. it will work again. >> we have to do something. since the recovery began, by the way, june 2009, household incomes are down 5.7%. that's since the recovery. when you're in a recovery, incomes are supposed to go up. >> yeah. what's disstressing and concerning is, at this point i don't know what governor romney has in mind. he's been saying all along he'll reduce taxes and shows up in ohio -- >> reducing tax rates. >> he shows up and says don't expect a huge tax cut, because what he's doing is lowering deductions and exemptions. great. i wonder if somebody will get around to telling me what those deductions and exemptions are

that he's going to lower. he's been running for president for seemingly half a century and none of us know what he plans to do. i may like it, but he hasn't told me. >> the bottom line of what he's going to do, minus the specifics, he's going to lower tax rates by 20% for all income groups and get rid of the special deals and deductions that some of the big guys get. >> well, you know, not only did median income fall, but economic growth was revised downward. david, we should be enjoying 4% growth, not minus 2% growth that we've had during the obama administration. rick, romney may have been running for president forever, but obama has been president for almost -- you know, for 3 1/2 years. >> and it seems forever. >> only to some of us. >> we're not going get the median incomes up until income growth up. simplification has been to do be

done. obama takes no interest in this. rick, when was the last time you even heard presint obama talk about growth? >> let me actually switch -- let me switch to mark now. mark, what do you think of the obama tax plan? >> well, look, i don't know if obama has really a tax plan, but i don't think the problem is taxes here. i think the problem is people don't have an income. the reason they don't have an income, they don't have jobs. we have a demand problem in the economy, not a tax problem. cutting taxes, if you have no income, does not make any difference. we need to stimulate demand. how can we stimulate demand? we can do it in a variety of ways, but cutting taxes is not going to get us where we want to go. >> victoria, the message of mitt romney, and a lot of people, is if you overhaul this complex tax code and get the incentives back in, that will help small businesses, particularly go out, build their businesses, and hire

more people. >> i think that's absolutely true. business owners, small and large, are holding back. they're fearful that they're going to have higher taxes down the road on their own profits and also just on the cost of hiring a new person. they're fearful those costs will go up in the forms of taxes and regulations. so, mark, i agree with you that it's a demand problem, but taxes are at the center of this. romney is actually sending a message to business owners that he's looking at reducing those burdens to hiring, and that's what we need. i mean, we've got higher unemployment than when obama took office, and we have a really low workforce participation rate. that's really troubling. because those people are just deciding not to work. that's where you're going to get a higher and higher cost of entitlements in this country. >> mike, the main problem for most of us, lucky enough to have jobs, the money in our pocket is less than it was, and it's worth less too. >> right. the value of the dollar is falling considerably under

president obama because of all the money printing he's done. >> the money printing that ben bernanke has done. >> supporting the treasury and borrowing by obama. what romney understands, david, and president obama is clueless about, there's a big difference between tax credits and tax rates. cutting tax rates gives you incentive to invest in plant and equipment which then allows you to hire people, because you're going to get to keep an extra amount of money on each dollar of profit you make. cutting tax credits does not hurt incentive, because tax credits are temporary and does not encourage investment. >> steve, i want to keep it on the simplification, because that's success i can identify with. i haven't my own taxes in a long time. the reason is, because it's just too complex. i'm not a small business. if i was a small business, i'd have to do devote hundreds of hours of time, a lot of money, to figuring the thing out. >> that's right. the irs has figured out, david, that last year we spent 6.5 billion hours filling out tax forms, the equivalent of

2 1/2 million full-time jobs. it cost the economy $300 billion a year. huge waste of brain power. so yes, tax simplification is absolutely essential. paul ryan, the vice presidential candidate, has an even better plan than romney has, and that's junk the code, have two rates after exemptions, 10% above $100,000, 25%. that would get the economy moving. >> what mike was talking about, all of these tax cuts just add to the tax code, they don't make it simpler or smaller. >> i can get behind a simpler tax code, but i'm still suffering from the ripple in the force i felt when david asman told me i was right. i'm going to lose my liberal union card. steve pointed he likes the vice

president's candidate program the president's candidate. all of you republicans seem to bant paul ryawant paul ryan for, but he's not. >> i heard you say no about the idea of tax simplification. why is that not a good thing? >> we're all basing this argument predicated on lower tax rates are going to stimulate things. companies are not using the industrial capacity they have now. they laid off workers because there's no demand. cut their taxes, it doesn't mean they're going to build another factory if people aren't buying their goods. it's lunacy to think this would fix the problem. it's not a tax problem. it's a job problem. >> look what happened in the '80s. even when nowhere cut the capital gains, investment went up. in the second quarter in this

country, capital gains grew 0%. >> go ahead, mark. >> we've had a lost decade. a lot of that we did cut taxes and -- >> by the time bush put in his second round of tax cuts in 2003 through the end of his presidency, he created over 2 million jobs in this country. >> hold on, guys. trends over time, when you go back to 1983, you look at that long period of time where median income went up during the 1980s. it also happened, by the way, under president clinton with a republican congress. there's been times in the past where we've had a steady increase in the median income. >> the tax code is a huge barrier to production and demand. you don't get demand without production. the lower tax code means there's less of a burden and people do more positive things. >> okay, folks. thank you very much. >> thank you. >> oh, my god, like, this is the

most amazing show. i've enjoyed every minute of it. and, like, you know, it's important to take a moment every now and again and be, like, wow. >> you know, like, i have the same reaction when i watch neil's special coverage. see what all the excitement is about this wednesday when he heads to denver for the first presidential debate. first at 4:00 p.m. eastern. that's on fox news channel. then at 8:00 a.m. on fox business network, where i'll join him. neil will cover all the debates like no one else. watch it and profit from it. coming up next, governor romney investing prescott privas in china, not okay. president obama's stimulus plan reportedly sending u.s. tax dollars to china is okay? is this another case of hypocrisy. we report. you decide. hey! did you know that honey nut cheerios

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>> he's been talking tough on china. he says he's going to take the fight to them. he's going to go after these cheaters. i've got to admit, that message is the better -- is better than what he's actually done about thing. it sounds better than talking about all the years he spent profiting from companies that sent our jobs to china. >> david: president obama attacking governor romney over private investments in china, but what about sending taxpayers' dough, your money to china under his watch, like the

$1.8 million stimulus money spent on this federal building that reportedly used solar panels from china, or more money from the stimulus that reportedly purchased wind turbines from china. mike, you say the definition of high accuracy. how so? >> president obama is being a huge hypocrite. he's taking taxpayer money, throwing it over to china, and criticizing romney for using private capital and investing it in china. romney is doing it for profit, president obama is doing it for political profits. what will obama say about the pensions that profit from investments in china? this shows the president is absolutely clueless and is a good example of why the economy is doing so bad. >> david: mark, is this hypocrisy? >> neither side is clean here. this is just election year table pounding. we need china as a trade partner. we don't want a trade war with china. we're very dependent on their economy and they're dependent on

our economy. mitt romney has invested in china, has family trusts invested in china. both sides have done this here. if you want to call it hypocrisy, call it hypocrisy, but nobody is clean here. >> david: by the way, steve, it's not just china, $2.8 billion in department of energy money went to a spanish firm that did solar stuff. this is not just china. we're outsourcing a lot of money overseas. >> two points, david. romney, what he does it's vol temporary. when the government does, it's taking our resources and playing politics with it. it's about trade barrier, stealing our intellectual property rights, what both candidates should be focused on, not this thing about who invests more in china. >> david: if it's private money, may it go where it will. private investors are free to do

with their money, but not my money, not my tax dollars. >> i have no allergic relax to governor romney investing in china, if that's what he wants to do. the issue is he makes these investments, goes out on the campaign trail, trashes china, tells us these things he's going to get tough about, when we know he's never going to do any of it. >> david: how do we know any of it, by the way? >> we don't know it, but i'm pretty darn sure. here's the most interesting part, when he finally releases his tax return, we see he quickly sold off the investment he had because he looked guilty. that's kind of silly, isn't it? like the kid getting caught with his hand in the cookie jar. if you feel okay about, don't sell it off because you're running for president. >> david: victoria, talk about hands caught in the cookie jar, when you look at all of the billions of tax dollars to outsourcing to foreign countries, doesn't that make president obama look hypocritical?

>> yes. obama tried to play the role of investor when it came to green tech and creating green jobs, and found you can't avoid china. by one american university study 80% of the first $2 billion stimulus went overseas to china and other countries. that's a statement on the u.s. that says that we need to do more to become competitive. of course he's not addressing that. i think the more pressing issue is that, hey, this is a u.s. issue, if you're an investor today and you can't avoid china. >> david: rich, isn't it's a fact that one of the reasons some linda went bust and took half a billion dollars of our tax layers wit dollars with it - >> china couldn't meet the price. yet the government put money in there anyway. i feel this is kind of an outdated argument. what both of these candidates should be concentrating on is all the wonderful things that can lead to this renaissance in

american manufacturing. energy independence, for example. robotics. i feel this china argument is yesterday's argument. concentrate on the future and the future would look bright if one of these ninnies would talk about. >> david: mike, as long as we're not outsourcing our jobs, as long as they're not actually stealing our secrets, we get what we can from china, right? >> absolutely. iphones and computers, apple products, are hot. the economy is just tanking. he was ahead of the times. shows what a great investor is. >> he's a great investor, not a very good president. >> david: last word from rick unger. a new two-year high school plan that could save us all a bundle. that's at the bottom of the hour. first get ready to kiss low downpayments on mortgages forever. government regulators say they're too risky, but some say it's too risky to get rid of them.

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>> david: new home prices spiking up, a new sign lending may be ticking up. now regulators are looking to block mortgage providers from offering really low downpayments to attract customers. they say they're too risky and helped contribute to the housing meltdown to begin with. victoria says low downpayments aren't as risky as more government medaling. vicky, explain the flip side. >> this medaling is nonsensical. they want to say you hav to

over 10% on a downpayment when the national average is a little over 12%. so all you're going to do is hurt banks and borrowers, borrowers who are great borrowers, right? these are people with high credit. really nice incomes. people who banks say, well, yeah, they should get lower than the average of 12%. so it's nonsensical in that it doesn't touch most of the market. you're just hurting good borrowers. >> david: mark, is it good or bad to have the government getting in here? >> i think it's good. i don't think we've learned our lesson here. look what happened to the great meltdown in the last several years. there was lots of speculation, lots of people who were poorly qualified, could not pay the mortgages, and we ended up making mortgages to poor credits, and we bundled this and sold this in the secondary markets where there was even more speculation. when are we going to learn there needs to be some government controls on this? >> david: rich, what do you think of this? >> well, you know, government medaling created a lot of the

housing bubble. just recall that the government forced the banks to make a lot of dodgy loans to avoid racial red lining profiles. you know, no wonder -- i don't know what kind of wisdom mark thinks the government possesses. if they possessed supreme wisdom, but it doesn't. everything gets governmentized. >> david: the market is working, fewer contractors building fewer homes, and with the less supply the market goes up. >> there was a time not all that many years ago i would have absolutely agreed with your point of view. i lived in los angeles at the time of the great crash of the housing industry. i saw what the banks and even more the mortgage brokers, i saw what they were doing. if ever somebody made a case for why government should be regulating them that's exactly what these people did. now, you can argue that maybe

they've learned their lesson. maybe they won't do it again, but is there any reason to expect they won't? >> they were regulating it. >> david: another reason the market is beginning to work in housing is because the government programs have tapered off. we had so many of them that did nothing for several years to improve the situation. as they taper off, surprise, the market improves. >> if the government had stepped aside three years ago, let it work out, we'd have a housing boom now. we need 1.5 million new houses a ware because of wear and tear and population increasing. the inventories would have been brought down quickly. more over, in terms of 10%, the government ends up guaranteeing a lot of those mortgages so they're in there anyway. if you don't want 10%, get the government out and let the free market decide what the rate should be. >> david: last point from mr. capitalism. steve? lots of investors are sitting on the headlines until we know who will occupy 1600 pennsylvania avenue, but some say stocks will

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>> david: we're back with stocks. mike, cbs? >> i like them a lot, leading off with "made in jersey" in their fall lineup. how could you not like a show like that? >> i like jersey, but not cbs. they're dependent on